Cherie Federico is the Editor of Aesthetica Magazine and the Director of the Aesthetica Art Prize. Originally from New York, Cherie moved to the UK in 2002 to study for her Masters Degree and since then has developed Aesthetica into an international brand alongside the BAFTA Qualifying Aesthetica Short Film Festival and the Creative Writing Award. Cherie is delighted about this year’s Aesthetica Art Prize and is passionate about artists who are pushing boundaries and creating innovative works; those that inspire discussion, surrounding form or content, and speak about the world in which we live. Click here to view a film about the latest Aesthetica Art Prize, including interviews with the shortlisted artists.

Whitney Hintz Independent Advisor and Curator of the Hiscox Collection

Whitney Hintz manages the Hiscox Collection, which comprises approximately 600 works on display across the company’s 30 offices in the UK, Europe and USA. In addition to overseeing the Hiscox Collection and advising private clients, Whitney is a board member of the Crossrail Arts Programme and Sculpture in the City, an annual outdoor public sculpture exhibition located within the City of London’s Square Mile. She is also a consultant for the Kenneth Armitage and Eduardo Paolozzi Foundations, and was previously Associate Director at Frith Street Gallery where she worked on projects at Venice Biennale and Tate Britain.

Dr Alistair Payne is the Head of the School of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art. In 2015, his book chapter titled; The Virtual, Alternate Spaces and the Effects upon Artwork was published in the Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Creative Technologies through IGI Global. In 2013, the book chapter titled; The Virtual and Interdisciplinarity was published, also through IGI Global. In 2008 his book Painting as an Interdisciplinary Form was published through VDM Verlag. He has exhibited his work internationally with group and solo shows in the UK, Norway, Greece, the USA and Thailand, including the solo exhibition Indisciplinary Behaviour, Bergen 2014 and The Ends of Art, Athens 2013.

Olivier has been Head of the Photography programme at the Royal College of Art since 1997. His photographic work investigates the artifice of representation through the genre of the still life and animal portraiture. Research questions include the relation between the eye and other sense impressions; photography and literature; temporality and narrative forms in the still and the moving image. His work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; Museum Folkwang, Essen; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Brooklyn Museum; Tate Britain. He is currently completing a book on one photograph by Walker Evans, Kitchen Corner, Alabama 1936.

Chief Executive of York Museums Trust, Reyahn King previously worked as the Director of Art Galleries at National Museums Liverpool, Head of Exhibitions and Interpretation at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and Head of Heritage Lottery Fund West Midlands. York Museums Trust looks after several iconic historical and heritage sites in the city of York: York Castle Museum, the Yorkshire Museum and Gardens, York St Mary’s and York Art Gallery. In her early career Reyahn was a Curator of Prints and Drawings at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. She chaired the Jury for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2008 and 2010, and was a judge for Liverpool Art Prize 2008.

Jonathan Watkins has been Director of Ikon Gallery since 1999. Previously he worked as Curator of the Serpentine Gallery (1995-1997) and Director of Chisenhale Gallery (1990-1995).He has curated a number of large international exhibitions including the Biennale of Sydney (1998), Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art (Hayward Gallery, London 2001), Quotidiana (Castello di Rivoli, Turin 1999, Tate Triennial (2003), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Sharjah Biennial (2007), Negotiations (Today Art Museum, Beijing 2010) and the Guangzhou Triennial (2012). He curated the Iraqi Pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2013 and was the author of the Phaidon monograph on Japanese artist On Kawara.

Susanna has been Curator of Photographs at the V&A since 2008. She studied at Wimbledon School of Art, Bristol University and the Courtauld Institute of Art and formerly worked at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Her recent V&A exhibitions include Horst: Photographer of Style, Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography and Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton. She works as part of a team caring for the UK’s national collection of the art of photography, making the V&A collection accessible on a physical and intellectual level and researching and curating thematic displays. Susanna has written numerous publications on aspects of fashion and portrait photography.

Conceptual and data artist Rachel Ara graduated with a Fine Art BA from Goldsmiths College, London, where she won the prestigious Burston award. Winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 for This Much I’m Worth, the self-evaluating artwork. Pulling on her experiences as a computer system designer, the digital sculpture draws on data and complex algorithms to calculate its own value in real time. Her work is nonconformist with a socio-political edge that often incorporates humour and irony with feminist & queer concerns. Ara has just been shortlisted for the forthcoming Lumen Prize for her work D.O.A.M IV (The Death of Ana Mendieta). She currently lives and works in London.

Eleanor Clayton is Curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, where she contributes to the care, research, development and display of The Hepworth Wakefield’s collection and contemporary arts programme. She previously worked as Assistant Curator: Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Liverpool, and Assistant Curator: Public Programmes at Tate Britain and was involved in coordinating the 2008 Duveens Commission, Martin Creed’s Work No: 850 at Tate Britain. Prior to this she held research posts at the National Trust and the National Portrait Gallery, and has worked on new commissions by leading artists such as Martin Creed, Alexandra Bircken and Frances Stark.

Future Now: 100 Contemporary Artists 2017

Recognising both innovation and creativity, the Aesthetica Art Prize anthology showcases captivating projects from some of today’s leading artists, both established and emerging, across four categories.